[DerekShannon]

This is a great discussion about future spark plug options, but it looks like there is a very real way some technically inclined folks could help out right now. Murali has been wanting to resolve thermal and electrical breakdown issues of our evolving spark plug designs with finite element analysis in COMSOL or similar, but there just hasn’t been time. So rather than continuing to put it off and ending up with a “make and break” approach, we’d like to reach out and see if we could put together a team of volunteers that could work together with Murali for spark plug simulations, similar to the team supporting plasmoid simulations. After some feedback here we’ll post a dedicated thread or other official call for volunteers–Fusion wants *you*!

[DerekShannon]

OK, we’ll let him look for the gamma ray signature himself, then ;-P

[DerekShannon]

Yes, here is the follow-up all the way the to helium that I tweeted from @LPPX but didn’t get around to posting here: http://bit.ly/cxJGck

Not meant to be super-exact, but always amazing when Wolfram Alpha turns out to be useful for something!

[DerekShannon]

The carbon-12 has less mass than the proton and boron-11 did–That mass became ENERGY, so even though regular carbon-12 is stable, this transitory carbon-12 nucleus has too much energy and breaks apart into three alpha particles.

Wolfram Alpha is a easy tool to look at this.

It actually is possible in a small fraction of pB11 reactions for the energy to be released as a gamma ray instead of in the break-up into alpha particles, and when that happens you are indeed left with a carbon-12. A friend in astrophysics at Caltech suggested it might be interesting to look for the gamma ray signature as part of our diagnostics.

The comments here go into slightly more detail: https://focusfusion.pmhclients.com/index.php/site/article/are_you_sure_pb11_fusion_isnt_fission/

[DerekShannon]

Searching Google Maps for Lawrenceville Plasma Physics will get you the lab address at 128 Lincoln ;-D

[DerekShannon]

Thanks, James! I think we’d love to get your report as an official post. To be fair, I want to put forward some comments from a Caltech plasma physics prof who kindly met with me on Tuesday. They could both be part of the series “Better Science Through Opposing Viewpoints”.

[DerekShannon]

Wear it! Or just be very open in communicating the latest with the rest of the scientific community, and the willingness of the focus fusion team to collaborate and inclusively expand. Focus fusion would greatly benefit from more visiting scientists or graduate students working on the project, and even visits to the lab or phone/email consultations could provide invaluable insight into ongoing challenges.

Let’s imagine another lab might have a new kind of neutron detector and the FoFu-1 experiment would be a perfect venue to compare its performance relative to our current silver activation and bubble instruments. Or a group working on advanced materials for the Iter walls could do some testing with FoFu-1 just by exposing their material within the vacuum chamber during a few shots.

Get a talk on focus fusion scheduled as part of their university’s plasma physics seminar series; get them interested in looking at FoFu-1 data; or even get them eager to establish their own dense plasma focus lab just to try and prove focus fusion infeasible–Failing to falsify is sorta like proving! ;-D And the goal is to soon have a result from FoFu-1 that many labs will be want to replicate. Science will decide.

Oh, and have an awesome and educational time at the conference and in beautiful Cordoba!

[DerekShannon]

I will be reaching out to ultimate science hunk (and Hayden Planetarium director/Nova ScienceNow host) Neil deGrasse Tyson through my Planetary Society contacts while still in LA, FYI! ;-D

[DerekShannon]

which is why Pickens and others should diversify to hedge their bets!

[DerekShannon]

I tweeted with a link to this thread: billions in poverty in even best case scenarios means we MUST take lots of diverse risks on real clean energy 4 every1!

Great article, thanks to Brian H for pointing it out and to Thomas Fuller for stating the obvious!

[DerekShannon]

The chart represents where we want to go and (roughly) when, with the accompanying write-up explaining why and how we expect to land some data points in that direction. Beyond that, there’s science and patience.

[DerekShannon]

Thou blasphemest, Science is the God Doubt. All hail the Great Dawkins!

[DerekShannon]

Have a great trip, Eric! Ask the Oracle of Delphi for some fusion tips ;-D

[DerekShannon]

Awesome! Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help, even simple copy-editing ;-D

[DerekShannon]

By the way, here is the link to the Inc. article:

http://www.inc.com/magazine/20100401/on-the-road-with-a-supersalesman.html#

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